Posts tagged kddi

Japanese carrier au by KDDI has been creating tech-as-art for well over a decade with its Infobar line of phones. After starting with a stylish-but-dumb cameraphone in 2003, the brand began offering fully-fledged smartphones with the A01 back in 2011. It's now back with the third iteration of the ...

Transparency has always been one of Mozilla's big selling points with Firefox OS, but a new smartphone from KDDI in Japan is taking that idea to its literal extreme. KDDI's Fx0 is the first Firefox OS phone to hit Japan, and as you can see, its clear case (crafted by designer Yoshioka Tokujin) doe...

The internet is quickest when you have a direct connection to the sites you're trying to reach, but that's a daunting challenge in the Pacific -- undersea network cables can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It's therefore good to hear that Google and a host of telecom giants (China Mobile, Ch...

Japanese carrier KDDI has just announced a new HTC J Butterfly, a handset which resembles the HTC One in specs, but with features aimed at KDDI's home market. Like a lot of other Japanese devices, the 5-inch, full HD handset is waterproof in case you feel like taking fish photos. And to do so, the...

KDDI has just launched the first QuadHD (QHD) phone solely for the Japanese market, the Isai FL model built by LG. That gives us a preview of LG's G3's 5.5-inch 2,560 x 1,440 display and its record 538ppi resolution. As it happens, LG just announced that the panel has now been certified, and re-co...

The Japanese get phone alerts for natural disasters, but they have more than that to worry about these days with an occasionally belligerent North Korea just a stone's throw away. Accordingly, Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency says that it will soon warn phone owners when there's a hosti...

Sony's PlayStation Now streaming game service is still months away from launch, but Japanese cable company KDDI is testing the idea with the app-based GameNow service, through cable. It's the same company responsible for LG's Smart TV game service, although judging from the title lineup, J:Com and...

Dropping its radios for cell service and turning itself into a tablet... The 6.4-inch Xperia Z Ultra may be big enough to pull it off, but are you willing to pay just under $500 (52,000 yen) for the pleasure? Sony hopes you will. It's a Japan-only deal for now (neatly tying in with KDDI's own 4G-c...

For Fujitsu, fingerprint readers on smartphones are old hat; on Android tablets, however, they're still rare. The company should make those sensors easier to find with its latest Arrows Tab, the FJT21. The 10.1-inch slate uses its fingerprint reader to streamline Android 4.2's multi-user support, ...

Think 150Mbps LTE-Advanced data is quick? KDDI could offer far more bandwidth next year. Nikkei claims that the Japanese carrier plans to upgrade its cellular network to 220 Mbps data as soon as summer 2014. Service would reportedly launch with an Android smartphone, and rely on new wireless techn...

Cramming 13-megapixels into a phone means nothing if you don't have nice optics to boot. Fortunately, Sharp's Serie SHL22 has an unusually fast f/1.9 lens to go with its high-resolution sensor. Launching on KDDI this Friday, this Aquos Phone runs Android 4.2, has a fairly big 3,080mAh battery, a 4...

These days, the presence of a microSD slot on new handsets is arguably more important than the amount of storage on the inside. One such slot found its way onto the Chinese variants of HTC's One, and now Japanese network KDDI has unveiled its model -- the HTC J One (aka HTL22) -- also with expanda...

The FCC may have spoiled the surprise, but Sony's now gone official with yet another smartphone and this one's for its native Japan. The Xperia UL appears to be a slightly thicker riff on the Xperia Z, matching the display of the company's early-2013 flagship, with a quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4...

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we got an early peek of T-Mobile's Xperia Z thanks to the FCC, but we've now already gotten word of another unannounced Sony handset. While the published FCC report doesn't offer much more than a label, Blog of Mobile has turned up some images of what's purpo...

Sure, it's possible to get remote access to home theater devices through raw methods like a Slingbox, but KDDI has a slightly more elegant solution for those living in Japan. Its tiny Remote TV box puts a Blu-ray DVR on the local WiFi network to both schedule recordings while away and stream the v...

KDDI's funky au Infobar is back! Once again designed by the famed Naoto Fukasawa, this A02 -- co-developed by HTC -- brings the series up to date with Qualcomm's 1.5GHz quad-core APQ8064 (but with just 1GB of RAM), 4.7-inch 720p display, 16GB of storage, microSD slot, 2,100mAh battery, LTE radio (...

Its no Droid RAZR Maxx HD, but Kyocera's Digno S just might be the trick longevity lovers in the land of the rising sun are looking for. This 4.7-inch Android 4.0 handset's 2,520mAh battery claims to have the largest capacity of any sub 5-inch device in Japan, promising more than 18 hours of talk ...

We were intrigued by Sony's Xperia V back at IFA, but deals with specific carriers haven't been very forthcoming. Japan's KDDI is covering that gap by pledging to carry Sony's mid-size Android 4.0 phone as the Xperia VL. Everything we know and (mostly) love about the dust- and water-resistant phon...

The AQUOS Phone Zeta SH-02E was first with Sharp's new IGZO LCD technology a few days ago and it's been followed quickly by another device, the AQUOS Pad SHT21. Scheduled to debut on Japanese carrier KDDI in mid-December, this 7-inch slate claims battery life of up to two and a half times greater ...

We've been hearing about a certain 5-inch HTC phablet for Verizon since July, but it looks like its Japanese counterpart may actually hit the market first. Unveiled by KDDI as the HTC J Butterfly (HTL21), this Android 4.1 device is the first announced phone to feature a 5-inch, 440ppi full-HD "Sup...